Just a few comments. > -----Original Message----- > From: Will Tomlinson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Sunday, December 12, 2004 7:16 AM > To: CF-Talk > Subject: CF vs ASP.NET! GET YOUR FRESH POPCORRRRN!! > > I'm going to bring this one in from the Blackstone Beta thread yesterday > because I think we all need to talk about this. I'm not going to rehash > most of what's been said in that thread. > > ASP.NET is taking market away from CF! WHY? Will Blackstone fix the shift
Apparently this doesn't seem matter (if it's true) as all reports from MM indicate that CF sales have been steadily growing since the merger with most sales to new customers. In general the Web Application market is growing - there's plenty of room for multiple vendors to see increases sales. > that's taking place? I say no! CF is still outrageous to purchase. The > licensing for the .NET SDK is free as is the licensing to deploy. I'm not Macromedia simply does not have the resources to compete at this level, it's true. Microsoft (and a few others) can spend millions developing an application or technology and give it away in hopes of selling tools and OSs. In MM's case CF development requires more. For example take a look at the pricing between CF Pro and CF Enterprise. It's a tremendous difference, yeah? The core of that difference is not at MM however, but rather in the cost of the licensing the third party components contained in the products. MM can't "give it away" without dropping those third party extensions. (This, by the way, is also one reason that BlueDragon CAN give it away - they are still taking a development hit, no doubt, but there are fewer "hard costs" associated) That being said the question is "why buy it?" Well, I've my reasons, but the real answer is "who cares?" as people are buying it. They obviously have their reasons and the product gives them something (speed, features, peace of mind or whatever) that they're willing to spend money on. > trying to attack CF here, I'm really not. I'm just trying to wake people > up, because I think we've been lulled to sleep by Blackstone. Blackstone > is not equivalent to .NET in power and performance. Yeah, maybe it's easy As Ben's mentioned the two are really not comparable as one is an application framework and on is an application working on a framework. CF is an application. Say it with me: "CF is an application". Let's take your scenario to the extreme: .NET steamrolls the universe, Java is crushed under it's wheels like gravel. Do you know what you happen then? ColdFusion would be moved to a .NET platform! It's as simple as that. When the decision to move CF it a standard platform they quickly decided on Java vrx .NET simply because that's the only way they could support their Linux customers. However if market needs dictated they could create CF for .NET summarily. New Atlanta (with far resources that MM) has already done this, by the way. > for us to code our simple CFML, and yeah that <cfdocument> is pretty neat, > but there are a few factors making CF'ers like me change hats, and put on > the .NET one! Will MM ever come up with a true development language like > .NET? Are they going to keep putting more icing on the same cake, while > Microsoft bakes fresh ones? What could you mean here? .NET isn't a development language. .NET is a framework that supports multiple development languages (VB and C# to name two). Are you comparing CF's tag-based development to them? > I'll plug Tim Uzzanti's comments below. I think the man would know > something about the subject, plus he'll tend to be more honest since he's > not on our side of the business. Two things here: 1) Even if CF could never, would never and can never have work with any Fortune 100 companies, that still leaves several million websites that it CAN work with. 2) You have to place his comments in context. It may be fair to say that CF applications running on the built-in server (JRUN) can't compete but CF applications do not have to run on that server. 3) I respect his opinion, but prefer to see actual proof. Also it strikes me that this comment seems taken out of context. As he notes, there is definite confusion on the technologies infrastructure and this comment doesn't illuminate that at all. > Asking someone who maintains and manages 10,000 hosted applications on > Cold Fusion and someone who manages thousands of .NET applications would > probably give you a pretty good opinion of what they see? Is it in my BEST > interest to tell a customer not to use CF, or is it in my best interest to > suggest what might be the best technologies from my experiences on their > requirements? The latter of course. Do as you think right by your customer. However this is a cut-and-dry answer. I've been working in a fortune 50 for nine years that benefits greatly from CF (even when they don't want to admit it) and have worked with dozens of smaller (and a coupla larger) companies that have also benefited greatly. > Someone mentioned ediet.com which has a traffic ranking of around 280,000 > and in comparison CrystalTech is around 23,000. Microsoft.com which is in > the top 10 is using ASP.NET and Dell.COM which is in the top 100 is also > using ASP.NET Any of these sites could be done using CF on a suitable J2EE server. ANY SITE could legitimately be done by pretty much any enterprise-level tool actually - the differences are in architecture and availability of resources, not in code. Amazon.com, for example doesn't use .NET, neither does Yahoo or Google. IBM and Sun are definitely J2EE. These kinds of "comparisonless comparison" just don't say anything. > Regarding the back end of Cold Fusion: CFMX is much better than CF5 but > still has many limitations and quirks that we have see and deal with every Are you honestly saying that .NET is "quirkless". ;^) > day. I am not saying that CF doesn't have the ability to grow with larger > sites because it has features like the ability to cluster machines and the > classes are compiled etc. What I am saying is, if you would like to build Actually CF doesn't have those features. J2EE has those features. > One last comment that I would also provide to a potential customer who may > want to move from a shared environment to a dedicated environment is that > you will need to purchase a license for CFMX. If this is a large site and > will expand to multiple servers then they will need to purchase a $4,500 > license possibly x 2... Again, this isn't something that affects CT, but > would affect the customer..." I support CrystalTech completely. I support them because THEY support a ColdFusion site of on mine that (on their rather low powered $26/month account) handles over 600,000 page views in two days. This is more that most sites and is the most I've had to deal with outside an enterprise scenario, but CrystalTech (and CFMX) handles it well. However this is only anecdotal evidence to meet your anecdotal evidence, not proof of anything. Jim Davis ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Special thanks to the CF Community Suite Gold Sponsor - CFHosting.net http://www.cfhosting.net Message: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm/link=i:4:187286 Archives: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/threads.cfm/4 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm/link=s:4 Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.4 Donations & Support: http://www.houseoffusion.com/tiny.cfm/54
